It was day four – or three and a half – Dick wasn't sure how to count his days and didn't know whether they were worth counting anymore. Harley had gone through an entire canteen of water last night, leaving them with only half a canteen, but the only thing on the back of his mind was how horrible he felt for leaving her on that atoll all night.

Dick sat on the beach with his arms around his knees, looking to the east at the atoll – which had come back – and then at the large island to the north. He had woken up early that morning, so he decided to raft across the atoll again and get new fish. Without any form of refrigeration, there was no use keeping fish uncooked for more than an hour. They couldn't afford to get food poisoning, especially after going through over half their water supply in one night.

Harley wandered out of the forest with a strange wooden contraption. Dick turned to her. His eyes widened. He looked away. She had taken off her suit and was walking around in her underwear. She planted the wooden contraption into the sand before hanging her red and black jester outfit over the wooden beam to dry it in the sun.

"Good morning…" he said.

"Mornin', Richard. What smells so good?"

"Fish. I saved some for you," he said, still averting her gaze.

Harley folded her arms under her breasts. "Hey! Looking away from me is one thing, but don't scrunch your face like you're disgusted by what you see."

"I wasn't trying to offend you," he said. Dick looked at her. He really took his time to get the next part out. "Are you still mad at me? I mean, by all means, you have a right to be – I nearly drowned you. I'm just asking so I know if I–"

"You're a lot cuter when your mouth is closed. Has anyone ever told you that?" Harley said, sitting down. Dick got the hint. He kept quiet and ate his fish. "How about we wipe each other's slates clean. I pretend you didn't try to drown me. You pretend I never drank the water. Why be at each other's necks if we might not have that much time together, you know?"

"Seriously?" Dick asked. He wasn't complaining but… he was still very confused. This was Harley Quinn, after all. Five days ago, they were mortal enemies. This whole journey started in Japan, when Dick was called to Tokyo to help take Harley down. Now, here they were sharing fish on a beach on some Pacific Island.

"Seriously." Harley used her uninjured arm to shake Dick's hand.

Dick stood up and tried to change the subject. "Since we have nothing to lose, I was thinking of heading out to the large island over there," he said. He was hesitant because the landmass was massive compared to the main island and covered with lush vegetation. On top of that, every other morning, storm clouds would pass over the island and dump tons of water on it, meaning A) maybe there would be some freshwater, but also B) the waters surrounding it were much more turgid and bumpy. "It could be risky, but it's a risk I'm willing to take at this point."

Harley stood up. "Exactly how risky is 'risky'?"

"Well, I'll be crossing over dozens of miles in a tiny raft, so I'd say pretty risky," he half-joked, "But it's the eleventh hour and we don't really have many options." His options were leaving the main island and potentially dying, or staying on the main island and definitely dying. Harley asked if he wanted her to come along. He told her it would be safer if he went alone.

"What am I meant to do until you get back then?" asked Harley.

"You'll be alone on a desert island. You can do whatever you want." Dick said. No one would be there to stop her. He piled the empty canteens and ziploc bags on the raft before jumping onto it. He paddled slowly, looking back at Harley every few minutes. She walked back and forth on the beachfront before disappearing into the forest. He turned his attention to the island ahead and paddled onwards.

It was a long and tiring journey to get to the big island. It took Dick over two hours and as he reached the island, he could already hear the singing of birds. He pulled the raft deeper onto land until it was resting on the tall grass. He turned around and stared at the sizable landmass. The island was enveloped in a thick fog with tall trees and wet rocks. It was a proper jungle with tall trees that created a thick canopy overhead.

Dick fell onto his back. Initially, out of exhaustion, but after refilling his lungs with air, he stayed there and just listened to the sounds of birds. Birds meant food. Not just for him, but it meant that there were enough resources on this island to sustain life. Get up, he told himself. There was no time to sit and take everything in. He was on the clock. He needed to explore as much of the island as possible before the sun started to set. It took two hours to get to the island, so if storm clouds appeared over the horizon, Dick wouldn't have much time to get out of the storm's path.

He wandered into the wall of greenery. The air was thick and the world was green. Everywhere he looked, he was greeted by moss and shrubbery and wet foliage. "Crab!" Dick yelled, just in time for the little critter to scamper under a rock. He chased after it for a few minutes, following it deeper and deeper into the forest until it reached a thin stream and submerged itself under the creekbed. His attention shifted to the presence of water.

He fell to his knees. The water was moving. He dipped his canteen into the water. He took a sip.

It was freshwater.

He followed the creek – overcome with a brand new sense of adventure. It got thicker and wider, eventually turning into a river. He followed it to a pool of running water with a waterfall. The sound of crashing water was deafening. Dick stood with his calves submerged in rushing water, staring at the waterfall.

He played in the water. He felt like a kid in a puddle on a rainy day. He grabbed handfuls of water and threw them into the air, letting the freshwater fall onto him like rain. He dipped his head under the water and washed his face. He was standing there in the torn remnants of his suit, so he removed the suit and let some freshwater run through it. He wrung it out then realised he had to wear it again. If only he had Harley's makeshift clothesline. Harley, Dick's senses returned to him. There was no time to waste.

He fell onto one knee and filled the canteen until it was full. He made numerous trips to his raft and back to the waterfall, filling every canteen with drinkable water. And now that he knew there was a steady source of water, they didn't have to be so strict about water rations. Unfortunately, it would mean having to go back and forth between this island whenever they wanted water though.

Dick stood on the beach of the big island and looked around. He let his mind go through the motions. What if we just move everything from the main island to this island, he asked himself. There wasn't really any flat land to build a home but it was better than the volcanic rocks of the main island. Dick filled the last canteen with water before looking around for things to do. He took a lap around the island. It took about forty minutes because of how large – and difficult to navigate – the island was. It was a lot harder to travel across than the main island. The island was essentially three large dormant volcanoes that rose from the ocean to form a crown-shaped island rich with foliage, black soil, and – most importantly – water. Freshwater. Freshwater that came down in rivers and waterfalls from the peaks of the mountains and drained out into the ocean or ended up in lakes.

There was plenty of wood, too. Dick sat on a log and thought about it. A bird landed beside him. It pecked at the wood around him before staring at the young man, analysing him. He stuck his hand out and the bird hopped onto it. He lifted it to his face.

It pecked at his hand. He resisted the urge to throw it off. He placed the little bird on the log again and rose to his feet. Today was not the day to debate such strange predicaments. It was time to go home. He hopped onto his raft and sailed back to the main island.

The sun was starting to come down from its perch when Dick made it back to the island. Two hours of uninterrupted sunlight blasting his face left him exhausted and red. He beached his raft and dragged it to the forest. He found Harley on the beach cooking fish. Seeing a half-naked Harley Quinn crouching in front of fire took the breath from his lungs. "Damn," he said.

Harley jumped and fell on her back. "You scared me."

"Where did you get the fish from?" Dick asked.

"I just walked along the beach's coast and stabbed at 'em with that spear of yours," she said. Apparently, it took her a few tries but once she got one it was a piece of cake. She stood up and turned to him. "You look like shit," she said.

He told her that he couldn't spend the whole day under the shades of trees like she did. "On the upside, I brought water," Dick said. "Freshwater." He told her about the rivers on the big island, as well as the animals and the forests and the volcanoes. The island was much livelier than their current island, which left Dick curious as to what the other islands were like. Unfortunately, every other island was at least three hours away by raft. Until they could traverse the seas with a bit more speed, they were limited to these three islands.

The main island for shelter and the jet, the atoll for food, and the big island for water. It wasn't much but it was a good start. Dick wanted to give the jet another look. He doubted he could get it back in the air but if he could get some electronics running, they could have a much faster and more automated boat, he said.

"You'll do that in the morning," Harley said. She'd made fish and she wasn't letting him get away without tasting it. Dick sat across the campfire from Harley and ate away at the cooked fish. It was a little overcooked but it was better than the fish he'd made earlier.

"How is it?" she asked.

"After a long day of eating nothing, it's pretty good," Dick said, munching away.

"I'm glad to hear that. Mr J always hated my cooking," Harley said.

"Oh yeah, how come?"

"He has a distinguished palette," she said, "And I'm not really a good cook, so anything I make is never to his liking."

"Mh, could've fooled me," said Dick.

"What about the Bat? He doesn't strike me as a man who likes to cook," Harley said.

"He isn't but Alf… uh, his assistant is always around to keep him in check. When you have all the money in the world, why cook something when you can just hire the best chef in the world to make it for you," Dick licked his fingers. Regardless, every Sunday – when he was Robin – they would sit at the table for dinner. Batman would invite all the maids to sit and eat with him because he claimed being the Batman was a team effort and every member of the team mattered.

"Wow, that must've been nice," Harley said. "Do you have family back home?"

Dick eyed the woman. He had to remind himself that at the end of the day they were still enemies. If they did manage to find their way back to Gotham, how much information was he willing to cede to her. Harley caught his gaze. She was thinking the same thing he was. She told him that she knew his name – even though she was insistent on calling him Richard – if they returned to Gotham, she would simply look these answers up herself.

"My family died. We used to be a family of trapeze artists and acrobats. Me, my mom, and my dad. But they were murdered by a mob boss because our circus's owner refused to pay him protection money."

"Shit…" Harley's shoulder's sank. "I'm sorry to hear that." She wondered which mob boss it was. Dick assumed she wouldn't know him, but Harley reminded him that she was dating the Clown Prince of Crime. Every mob boss in Gotham paid protection money to the Joker, she told him.

"Do you know Anthony Zucco?"

"No shit? Tony? The same Tony that was killed outside of Arkham Asylum on the night he got released?" Harley asked. "You did that?"

"Of course not. I had the chance to. Over and over and over. I spent every waking moment from my parents' death to his death thinking about using the skills Batman taught me to torture him mercilessly until he told me why he did. Keeping him tied in a basement for months until he told me why it had to be my parents that night. And then, when he was a broken and dishevelled shell of his old self, I wanted to kill him like he killed my parents," Dick said.

"But?"

"But Batman happened. Even now, regardless of what moniker I go by, he constantly takes time out of his day to remind me that a hero's job is to end the cycle of crime, not add to it. If you start taking lives then you're no better than any of the mob bosses and supervillains." Harley asked him what the point of letting the law handle it was when criminals would break out every few years and start the cycle all over again. Dick told her that it was all about rehabilitation. Everyone can be rehabilitated. "No one is born evil. It's circumstances and our environment that make us do bad things. I never wanted to kill Zucco until he killed my parents and I never would have stopped wanting to kill him if it wasn't for Batman. I want to be someone's Batman, but as Nightwing."

Harley asked him if he thought the Joker was redeemable, to which Dick said he was. He would have to serve his time in Arkham Asylum for all the people he killed, but even he could learn the error of his ways. "What about me?" asked Harley. She wondered if there would ever come a time where she could be working as a secretary at an accounting firm or as a waitress at a burger joint.

Dick nodded. "No one is beyond the event horizon just yet. Not even you, Harley."

Harley asked him what an event horizon was. Dick lay on his back and stared at the sky. The sun was starting to set and thousands of stars were taking their place as diamonds on the crown that was the night sky. Harley lay alongside him and stared at the sky too. Dick told her about black holes and event horizons. Since they were on the topic of space, he told her about pulsars, and quasars, and binary stars, and other stellar phenomena. He told her about how the universe as we knew it was expanding at an accelerating rate and that one day the Milky Way would clash with its nearest neighbour, the Andromeda, and the earth would be detached from the sun and sent hurtling into space – cold and dark.

"I'm not boring you, am I?" Dick asked.

"No, no, I'm enjoying this…" said Harley, softly. "Tell me more."

Dick continued to talk about space and its vastness. He spoke about how insignificant and feeble it made him feel at times – thinking about how large and infinite the universe is. At the end of the day, he was just one man, on a big blue marble in the darkness of space. "Have you ever seen the Pale Blue Dot photo?" he asked.

"No."

"Well, the first satellite to ever leave the solar system – its name was Voyager 1 – and as it left the solar system, it turned to look at the earth for the last time and snapped a picture. The image is entirely black with a few bands of the sun's rays running down it. If you didn't know any better, you wouldn't even give it a second look." Harley asked what was so special about it. "In the rightmost band of light, you can see a small blue pixel. In fact, it's probably even smaller than a pixel now that I think about it. It's tiny. It's a tiny blue dot, but that blue dot was home." Dick stared at the skies and tried to recall Carl Sagan's quote about how every religion, every ideology, every hunter and forager, every king and peasant, and every saint and sinner that had ever existed on the planet could have been condensed into one speck of dust hovering in a sunbeam.

"You sound scared," Harley said. She asked if he had a fear of the unknown.

Dick hesitated. He sighed. "No, I have a fear of not being enough." He told her that Batman had left his mark on dozens of planets in dozens of star systems, the same went for Superman, and the Green Lanterns. "I don't want to be another hero, especially not another Robin. I want to leave my mark," he said.

Harley told him he had nothing to worry about.

They sat there in an intimate silence for a few minutes. "Hey, I feel kinda bad that I didn't get to ask you if you had a family waiting for you back home."

Harley yawned. She rolled onto her side, facing away from Dick. "Oh, me? It's just me and the Joker, I'm afraid…"

Dick chuckled. "The Joker? Are you sure you don't mean Mr J… Harley? Harley Quinn?" he propped himself up to stare at her. He stared at the back of Harley's head. "Harley Quinn?" He called her name one more time. She was out. It had been a long day, so he understood. His eyes trailed down the back of her neck until they got to her shapely back.

She was still lying there in her underwear. He worried about her freezing for a moment but the fire was still raging and the island's weather was warm enough for underwear to suffice. His eyes drifted further down until they landed on her ass. It gently swayed back and forth as she slept. She had long, slender legs that were pale and seemed to shimmer with the campfire.

"You're staring," Dick told himself. He shook himself back to reality. He needed to get these thoughts out of his mind. He lay back down on the sand and stared at the stars. Think unsexy thoughts, he told himself. He thought about baseball, but that quickly spiralled into thoughts about first base, and homebase, and baseball bats sliding into holes they shouldn't be sliding into.

"Holy Graf Zeppelin~" he said as he dug his head into the sun. His face was so red and hot that it could've turned the granules into glass. "Goodnight, Harley Quinn."

The next day, on day five (four and a half), Dick woke up to the sound of waves crashing against the shore, the sight of trees swaying in the wind, and the feel of a warm body pressed against his own. The sun was rising, the fire had gone out, and – somehow – in the middle of the night, he'd managed to move from one side of the campfire to the other.

He was pressed against Harley's back. His chin was nestled between her neck and shoulder. His chest, heart thumping, was firmly pressed against her slim back. And he could feel himself, also thumping, sandwiched between the same ass he'd been checking out last night.

"What the…?" he whispered.

"Good to see you're finally awake," Harley said. Her voice was calm and sleepy, as though their bodies weren't rubbing against each other with every brief movement. He asked her what happened. "Are you really going to play the sleepwalking card?" Harley asked.

"Sleepwalking?"

"Yeah, in the middle of the night, you jumped to your feet, walked around the campfire, and slept right next to me," she said. "I tried to move every, but for every inch away I moved, you moved two inches closer. Thanks to my broken arm, I couldn't push you away or anything. It's a good thing I'm not still tied up, who knows what would have happened."

Dick apologised profusely. He promised her it was a mistake and that he would never do it again.

Harley laughed. "No need to apologise. It seems Little Dick is happy to see me. Although, from what I'm feeling down there, there is absolutely nothing little about that dick."

Dick's eyes widened. He stuttered, trying to gather the right words to get him out of this situation. "I should probably get up and get us some fish for the day. Right? That sounds like a good idea. I should probably get on that."

"You're doing a lot of talking and not much moving. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say you're stalling to cop a longer feel, Boy Wonder."

"Eh! No! Of course not!" Dick jumped to his feet. Harley looked up at him. She looked down. Then back up. He covered himself with his hands. "I should get going."

"Good luck."